I have extracted most of the models from Shadow of Mordor, and would like to graduate to the sequel.However, I am unclear on which script I use to unpack the game's .arch06 archives.

I understand that shadow_of_mordor.bms has been updated to unpack the Shadow of War .embb files, which I assume are found within the .arch06 archives, but which script do I run to get them out of there in the first place?

Even if it involves manually altering things. I've tried unpacking an archive, not editing anything, and just repacking a few files and even with no changes the files are still slightly larger. Can't use the alternate version since afaik the files have no offsets. Is there anything I can do? Make a new archive? Anything?

EDIT: I've looked into Oodle and could it be that its due to a version difference in the Oodle used by the game archives vs Quickbms? The differences in these unaltered files was pretty small, only a few bytes in some cases.

I had some spare time available and decided to try and figure out how the archive format works on my own. Help me understand it a bit better so I can ask questions better. I've noticed that the extractor often turns out files with the same name, that it then auto-renames. I've got a hunch that those files are actually all supposed to be one archive, and the extraction script is reading it wrong.

Lets take Patch_00.arch06 as an example. When used to unpack it, Quickbms gives a prompt to rename duplicate files, and ends up extracting 8 files total. fortwallgameplay.bndl, fortwallgameplay.embb, and three additional pairs of files that had to be automatically renamed. My hunch is that this archive is actually only supposed to contain two files. It seems like the file structures within fortwallgameplay.embb are listed in such a way that the extractor ends up treating different subfolders within that archive as different archives completely.

EDIT: I've extracted all of the automatically renamed embb's from that patch archive. Each one was a different subfolder in the same file structure. I'm almost certain my hunch was right. I know nothing about bms scripting, so I can't fix it. Hopefully someone who does know what to do sees this. Will keep digging. I guess I'm technically making a bug report for this specific script. I have no idea where I would make such a report more formally, so I'll just have to hope that the creator sees it.

EDIT EDIT: Apparently aluigi already handled this problem. I'm certain I'm using the newest version of the script.

Success! Thanks a million aluigi. By setting the offset/size/zsize variables to 01, I was able to get a file appended to the archive. It didn't work completely, some bytes got garbled, I had to manually add some values to the newly appended file since it included the contents but not the actual sizes associated with them. But after making all the adjustments, it worked. I have an arch06 archive with a custom file added to it. Next step is trying the same thing but with something more complicated, a mesh file.

EDIT: Mesh worked. I re-extracted it and tested it by importing it into 3ds max. Its intact. Next is trying out folder structures, seeing if the process still works when I'm using multiple files, and then finally, trying to replace an in game model.

EDIT2: I've now tried this with multiple files at once. I imported a mesh, skeleton, and cloth file. The manual hex editing required is going to make it unlikely anybody but me will use this, but it seems to work. Next step is to either figure out how to do file structures, figure out if I need to alter the gamedb file to get it to load these assets, etc.

No luck actually pulling off a replacement. Files get into the archives just fine, but I cannot for the life of me find the right file to replace to actually affect the game. The archives are definitely being loaded, because if I put in an incorrect one the game won't launch. No crashes happen, just nothing occurs. No idea what to do from here. Hopefully aluigi can shed some light on the BNDL files, which might help.

Aluigi has released a script 0.4 that addresses an issue with file paths, resulting in output folders and files being mangled. I've tested it on a few archives and I no longer get asked to rename files during extraction. The output folders make far more sense than they used to. Haven't tried using it for a replacement yet, but I'm far more hopeful now. Thanks a million aluigi.

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